Im impressed with Roger Vers answers to the illicit activity questions. Kudos.
As for his point about futures, hes correct that in a non-manipulated market then futures increase utility and decrease volatility, but given that Bitcoin is a controlled by an oligarchy and the power of governments to crash the price by for example launching a ban on exchanges of non-compliant ICO-issued tokens, could enable the insiders to profit on short and long manipulations of the price.
Hopefully it deos. Because some people say futures will affect the price extremely negatively.
Not immediately negative. Need some months for large (leveraged) positions to accumulate before the following manipulations can begin:
The 3rd one has the highest probability
after we hit the $40k peak. But the bottom would be > $10k.
The last (4th) one [the Tether/Bitfinex collapse] may occur during the 3rd one, and may also include:
do not forget that hedge funds in the billions could also short bitcoin with the click of a button.
They need someone to take the opposite side of the trade. So this cant occur until the futures market gain adoption.